Insurgency vs. Civil War

[SteveMetz]

But if this is the official answer, I think it is worthy of a deeper look.

If insurgency is merely a strategy employed by a civil war opponent to the state it really doesn't offer much to the counterinsurgent in terms of helping him understand and resolve the threat. Simply defeat the civil war opponent and the insurgency will go away.

But that's not how it works. Every time that tact is taken (and that is often), the insurgency simply flares back up. Perhaps with a new name, new leadership, new ideology, often even a different segment of the society; but always to counter the same failed system of governance that gave rise to the last flare up.

I think we do better when we look at insurgency as a set of conditions that may well manifest in several forms: a miserable populace that does not dare act out; a populace that does act out - either choosing non-violent (subversion) or violent (insurgency) means. The key to effective COIN is to address the conditions and not merely set out to defeat those who dare to respond to the conditions.

I would never purport to give an official answer. But the key distinction is between defeating an opponent and altering whatever conditions are that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. It doesn't matter whether a war is civil or international, or whether one of the antagonists uses a strategy of insurgency or not, simply defeating the enemy does not assure that the conflict will later re-emerge, but at least opens that possibility. E.g. World War I which did not alter the conditions that gave rise to it, while World War II did.

When a conflict does re-emerge, even if one of the antagonists used insurgency earlier they may not later. South Vietnam did not fall to an insurgency. In other words, a given conflict can have insurgency phases and non-insurgency phases.

Simply because something is a "civil war" does not, in itself, imply whether the goal should be the limited one of defeating existing enemies or altering the conditions which gave rise to the conflict. A civil war simply involves antagonists from the same nation.

[M-A Lagrange]

ryanmleigh
Based on a lot of the recent discussion is there a need to distinguish between the political and military aspects of conflict. Could it be as simple as saying that civil war is primarily a military conflict with political action secondary while an insurgency is primarily a political conflict with military action secondary?

Probably far to simplistic, but still trying to wrap my head around the differences.

Some definitions from Wikipedia that have the advantage to be the ones from ICRC and great scholar:
Civil war:
James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state. The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa.
Based on the 1000 casualties per year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses the less-stringent 1000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007.
Further definitions
The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war". They do, however, describe the criteria for acts qualifying as "armed conflict not of an international character", which includes civil wars. Among the conditions listed are four requirements:
• The party in revolt must be in possession of a part of the national territory.
• The insurgent civil authority must exercise de facto authority over the population within the determinate portion of the national territory.
• The insurgents must have some amount of recognition as a belligerent.
• The legal Government is "obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war

Insurgency:
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) defines it as "An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict." The new United States counterinsurgency Field Manual, proposes a structure that includes both insurgency and counterinsurgency [COIN]. (italics in original)
Insurgency and its tactics are as old as warfare itself. Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. These definitions are a good starting point, but they do not properly highlight a key paradox: though insurgency and COIN are two sides of a phenomenon that has been called revolutionary war or internal war, they are distinctly different types of operations. In addition, insurgency and COIN are included within a broad category of conflict known as irregular warfare.
The French expert on Indochina and Vietnam, Bernard Fall, entitled one of his major books Street without joy: insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. Fall himself, however, wrote later on that "revolutionary warfare" might be a more accurate term. Insurgency has been used for years in professional military literature. Under the British, the situation in Malaya (now Malaysia) was often called the "Malayan insurgency"., or "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Insurgencies have existed in many countries and regions, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Djibouti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the American colonies of Great Britain, and the Confederate States of America.[16] Each had different specifics but share the property of an attempt to disrupt the central government by means considered illegal by that government. North points out, however, that insurgents today need not be part of a highly organized movement:
"Some are networked with only loose objectives and mission-type orders to enhance their survival. Most are divided and factionalized by area, composition, or goals. Strike one against the current definition of insurgency. It is not relevant to the enemies we face today. Many of these enemies do not currently seek the overthrow of a constituted government...weak government control is useful and perhaps essential for many of these “enemies of the state” to survive and operate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency

I would more or less in accordance with Wilf. Insurgency is qualifying a way to conduct war not a good term to describe a “war”.

International and non international wars can be done through irregular warfare or regular warfare.
The use of irregular warfare tactics is not sufficient to describe a movement as acivil war or an insurgency.

Insurgency as others did point it can be against a national government from nationals. Or against a foreign government by nationals. While a civilwar is only 2 or more nationals parties against each others.

[Bob's World]

Steve;

Actually S. Vietnam DID fall to insurgency. We tend to put way too much emphasis on the fact that a bunch of Westerners broke off a chunk of Vietnam in the middle of the insurgency and created this tremendous sanctuary for the insurgency called "North Vietnam." The creation of that state in mid-stream in no way changed the overall nature and goal of the larger insurgency. Ho followed the Maoist model with which prescribes advancing to decisive conventional operations as the final stage of the insurgency, which they surged up to several times, ultimately prevailing. We confused ourselves into thinking we had a state on state war with a supporting local insurgency and thereby got off track on our approach to the problem. We confuse ourselves often in these things by taking too seriously what governments think and perceive. Insurgency is all about what the populace thinks and perceives.

In other places we have confused ourselves by declaring "victory" because one insurgent group has been militarily defeated, while the underlying perceptions of poor governance with the populace have been largely untreated and continue to fester along re-emerging in violence a few years down the road (often with new groups, new ideologies and new leaders). Algeria and the Philippines spring to mind as a couple of recent classic examples of this. The insurgency is the perception among the populace, and is rooted in the government itself, not any one particular group that rises up to challenge that government.

Bob

[SteveMetz]

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

[Bob's World]

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

Agree with your last sentence completely, but will hold firm that insurgency is a state of populace perception about governance rather than a strategy employed by a civil war movement. surging to that large decisive conventional force was always the goal of the Vietnamese insurgency, just as it was always the goal of Mao himself in China. That is probably, in fact, the key distinction of Maoist insurgency, the goal of achieving decisive effects through large scale conventional military operations. Most probably think it is the communist ideology he employed.

Most insurgencies take many forms, and the form does not define them. It is in their formation that one fines the insights that enable effective COIN.

[Dayuhan]

James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state.

If one side of a civil war must be the state, that would exclude a case like Somalia, where there is no state. Seems an unnecessary qualification to me.

The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict.

A numerical cutoff offers precision, and some absurd possibilities as well. If the cutoff is 1000/year, that means a conflict could easily be a civil war one year, an insurgency the next, then a civil war again... which makes the distinction less than useful.

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

By that standard it seems that irregular warfare by internal forces opposed to the state is insurgency, while regular warfare by internal forces opposed to the state is civil war. That of course requires some fixed line defining irregular vs regular warfare.

Is irregular warfare the strategy, or insurgency... or are they the same thing?

Is the difference between civil war and insurgency purely quantitative, a civil war simply being a large insurgency? Or is there a qualitative difference as well?

Given current circumstances, a more relevant question might be how much foreign participation is required for a conflict to be inter-state, rather than civil war or insurgency. Are both civil war and insurgency by definition purely internal?

At a certain level the distinctions become semantic, and certainly there's going to be some overlap. At the same time, though, it's useful to have some consensus on what these terms mean.

[ryanmleigh]

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

Sir- Is insurgency really a strategy, or is it more just a tactic in the conduct of war? Maybe an operational approach in the broader context? Probably just confusing myself.

For me it seems like an insurgency would be the way, while terrorism, subversion, guerrilla warfare would be the means to conduct achieve political objectives.

If there is no political objective other than the overthrow of a government, would it not then be a civil war? Maybe I am just misguided.

[Entropy]

Steve;

Actually S. Vietnam DID fall to insurgency. We tend to put way too much emphasis on the fact that a bunch of Westerners broke off a chunk of Vietnam in the middle of the insurgency and created this tremendous sanctuary for the insurgency called "North Vietnam."

So why was the communist north created? If it wasn't because of poor governance by the south, then how could it be considered an insurgency, especially since the Vietminh were around before the partition and the creation of the RVN? Or, why can't the opposite case be made - that North Vietnam successfully fought off an insurgency from the south?

Similarly, what about the Koreas? Do we consider North Korea to be "insurgents" against the South? Or Germany before reunification? That doesn't make much sense. For all practical purposes, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were distinct states and one of those states conquered the other through conventional means. That the North also fostered an insurgency in the South (which ultimately failed) doesn't, it seems to me, make the entire conflict an insurgency.

[Steve Blair]

This also doesn't really take into account the social and cultural differences between the north and south (and even some ethnic differences). No, I'd say Vietnam actually runs closer to the civil war side of things.

[marct]

Staying away from Vietnam, how would you folks classify the Thirty Years War (outside of exceedingly messy)?

[Steve Blair]

Not one of my big areas of expertise, but I would say that it began as something like an insurgency based on religion (with the inevitable cultural overtones) and then grew into a civil war and finally became a world war (of sorts, anyhow).

[marct]

Not one of my big areas of expertise, but I would say that it began as something like an insurgency based on religion (with the inevitable cultural overtones) and then grew into a civil war and finally became a world war (of sorts, anyhow).

Could be, I honestly have no idea how to classify it using any of the current terms. "A great mutherin' mess" still seems to be the best classification for it .

In more on point terms, it appears to have had elements of insurgency, succession rebellion (e.g. Bohemia), various and sundry religious revolts / counter-revolts, inter-state warfare, military entrepreneurs becoming "legitimate" (e.g. Wallenstein), plus, plus, plus, as well as being a civil war in the HRE.

OTOH, another reason I brought it up is that the treaties that ended it are the foundation of the modern state system and, hence, a lot of our current definitions. Given that, it may be a useful case to look at to see if those definitions still make sense.

[ryanmleigh]

Not one of my big areas of expertise, but I would say that it began as something like an insurgency based on religion (with the inevitable cultural overtones) and then grew into a civil war and finally became a world war (of sorts, anyhow).

Sir- Your explanation again takes me back to a sliding scale of violence in conflict. With steps along the way. With insurgency residing somewhere near the bottom, and civil war higher on the steps along the way. Would you agree?

[Entropy]

Staying away from Vietnam, how would you folks classify the Thirty Years War (outside of exceedingly messy)?

Good question!

One theme I'm getting from the discussion here is that people are classifying based on three rough criteria:

1. Classification based on how the conduct of the conflict - ie. guerrilla warfare vs "conventional" warfare.

2. Classification based on the actor's intent or "why they are fighting."

3. Classification based on the actor's type of organization- ei. nation states, tribes, etc.

One problem that makes the 30 years war difficult to classify is that today we base our interpretations of conflict around #3 - the nation state as the "standard" political entity. If two states are in conflict, then it is "war." If the conflict occurs within the borders of what we call a state, then it is civil war/insurgency. So, as long as we put the state at the top of the organizational hierarchy, I don't think we will be able to "fit" many types of conflict, including the 30-years war, into a war/civil war/insurgency construct.

Of course, Wilf will come in and remind us again that these classifications are arbitrary and largely useless because war is war.

Mike,

My point exactly - why can't South Vietnam be viewed as the "insurgents" against the North? This goes back to my earlier point that these classifications are often self-referential.

[marct]

One theme I'm getting from the discussion here is that people are classifying based on three rough criteria:

1. Classification based on how the conduct of the conflict - ie. guerrilla warfare vs "conventional" warfare.

2. Classification based on the actor's intent or "why they are fighting."

3. Classification based on the actor's type of organization- ei. nation states, tribes, etc.

Nice summation, Entropy! Okay, what if we use these three classification, what, "dimensions(?), as the basis for defining a set of boundary conditions and see where that takes us? So,

1. the "How" a conflict is conducted would be tactical and grand tactical (yeah, I use the older system; so sue me ). That "how" or, rather, a group / factions selection of a given "how" at a point in time, should be conditioned by a number of different factors such as technology, social organization, time, ideology, cultural mores. As such, we might want to refer to insurgency / COIN as an "operational" (grand tactical) choice amongst a variety of others such as "conventional", "raising political awareness" (a la Mao), subversion, popular demonstrations, terrorist strikes, counter-terrorism, etc.

2. the "Why" question is a lot "fuzzier" in some ways, but I would suggest it gets back to two core areas: competing narratives / systems and competing faction placement (dynastic wars or which general runs banana republic X this week?). I *think* that this is a more strategic and grand strategic level, and definitely more in line with questions of legitimacy, governance, strat comm, etc.

3. The organizational type question should also feed back into both the first and second types, and is probably the critical one in terms of international law (Mike?). That said, I suspect that it is also the least important in operational terms except inasmuch as it produces operational limitations. The other thing is that if we want to produce a model like this, we would probably have to decompose organizational type into sub-characteristics such as resource control, governance, force "reach" (possibly further sub-divided by battlespace?), etc.

Leaving off how useful this might be for generating definitions, especially by spotting definitional "holes" and overlaps, I think that this might also get to Bob's point about it having some practical use.

[Bob's World]

Staying away from Vietnam, how would you folks classify the Thirty Years War (outside of exceedingly messy)?

But it was, as is often the case, one of many insurgencies all aimed against the illegitimate agents of the governance of the Holy Roman Empire. The wars were never about the promotion of Protestantism. (Ideology is always a critical requriement, but never an end unto itself. For some in movement, sure, but for the movement itself? No.)

In fact, Martin Luthor was pretty upset when smart political types recognized the value and power of his fresh thoughts on Christianity and co-opted them to fuel their insurgency against the Catholic governance.

All fueled by the information age created by the invention of the printing press, that served to "democratize" knowledge. Once the Catholic Church lost its monopoly on knowledge, it was only a matter of time before they also lost their monopoly on governance as well.

[jmm99]

at the very end of WWII in 1945 by what they (Ho, Giap, etc.) called the August Revolution. To them, they created the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the entire country - not just North Vietnam). They claimed governmental legitimacy from the August 25, 1945 abdication of Bao Dai in favor of Ho's government.

The Viet Minh had to deal with four foreign military occupiers during the 1945-1946 period: Japanese, Chinese, British and French. The Viet Minh and the French reached tentative agreements in 1946, which accepted French military forces in both the South and the North (replacing the other occupiers), but also recognized Ho's government. The French-VM accord blew up in the later half of 1946 and the First Indochina War ensued.

The position of Ho-Giap was that that war was the Resistence War - seeing France as a foreign invader with the restored Bao Dai as France's puppet. When that war ended in VM success, the Hanoi government was willing to allow a partition so that it could secure its base areas in the North. It had no intention of limiting itself to the North and its constitutions made clear that the DRV encompssed all of Vietnam.

Diem surprisingly survived and to some extent thrived in 1955-1959, with the US replacing France as South Vietnam's patron. Having completed their build-up of their Northern base areas, the Hanoi government re-instituted the Resistence War (using more of a neo-colonialist theme, and setting up the NLF as its front in the south).

The NLF guerrillas and cadres in the South (augmented by PAVN regulars) were therefore, in the Ho-Giap view, a typical resistence force looking forward to the day when it could achieve final juncture with the North's conventional forces. In short, Hanoi was waging unconventional warfare in the South against a quasi-foreign invader army.

Giap tried to effect a closing juncture in 1965, 1968, 1972 and 1975 (with final success). By that time, ARVN had committed half of its strength to baby sitting its pacification effort in rural areas (which saw some success before the final deluge).

So, what was Indochina-Vietnam in the South - an insurgency, civil war, resistence war, unconventional war with a conventional ending or something else ? Did and does it make a difference in what it's called ?

Regards

Mike

[Bob's World]

So why was the communist north created? If it wasn't because of poor governance by the south, then how could it be considered an insurgency, especially since the Vietminh were around before the partition and the creation of the RVN? Or, why can't the opposite case be made - that North Vietnam successfully fought off an insurgency from the south?

Similarly, what about the Koreas? Do we consider North Korea to be "insurgents" against the South? Or Germany before reunification? That doesn't make much sense. For all practical purposes, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were distinct states and one of those states conquered the other through conventional means. That the North also fostered an insurgency in the South (which ultimately failed) doesn't, it seems to me, make the entire conflict an insurgency.

Ike's assessment, in '56 I believe, was that if an open election was conducted that Ho would have taken some 80% of the popular vote nation-wide. Now, if we had still been proponents of Self-Determination in '56 we would have said "excellent, the people know what they want and by helping them achieve it we will have an ally and have stayed true to our ideals." But of course, the Dulles boys and Ike were well on the path of a new strategy rooted in control of nations on the fringes of Communist China and Russia to help contain that threat. So instead of allowing a pure execution of democratic principles to allow a self-determination of governance that would have made the whole of Vietnam a communist state (perceived reasonably as a "loss" for our team).

Lansdale was already hard at work on the ground in the south working to make Diem into a Magsaysay (which he never was); and we began a concerted effort to slow-roll the election and prop up our illegitimate puppet in order to sustain the false division of "North" and "South" states; knowing that an election would have merged the nation as one under a communist Ho.

Faced with the loss of "Hope" in the blocked access to legal means of changing governance, along with the "Injustice” and "Disrespect" of the same, and the externally provided "Illegitimate" governance of Diem; the insurgency that had been waged against the French picked up steam once again; this time with Ho having the legal sanctuary of a State in North Vietnam to help support and sustain his pursuit of classic Maoist insurgency.


Point being, the machinations of governments do not determine if a movement is an insurgency or not. It is the roots within the populace that determine the nature of it.

Our national pride, coupled with the fear of the expansion of communist ideology, led us to make decisions counter to our national ethos, and embroiled us in an otherwise wholly avoidable conflict. We should learn from this experience. The best COIN is done well in advance of a situation going kinetic, and because we did not appreciate that fact we adopted policies that were largely responsible for what followed.


Korea was a very different situation altogether. I doubt very much that the leadership of the North was the governance desired by the populace of the South; and I doubt very much that the Governance of the North and their Chinese backers would have been willing to sit down with the Governance of the South and their American backers and agree to some nation-wide process of self-determination and everyone agreeing to live by the same. So it began with two states already formed. I would tend to put this then into my civil war category with traditional warfare then being a valid technique for resolving the conflict.

Just my take.

[Ken White]

Our national pride, coupled with the fear of the expansion of communist ideology, led us to make decisions counter to our national ethos, and embroiled us in an otherwise wholly avoidable conflict. We should learn from this experience. The best COIN is done well in advance of a situation going kinetic, and because we did not appreciate that fact we adopted policies that were largely responsible for what followed.

Actually, that's all correct but you left a couple of things out.

Add the fact that Kennedy in addition to wanting to appear tough on Communism (your 'national pride,' part 1) also wanted even more to boost the US economy which was in the doldrums and a small war would fit the bill nicely and aid Democratic electoral hopes.

Eisenhower had been tempted to do the same thing to boost Republican hopes but the then CofS Army, Matthew Ridgeway, talked him out of it. Kennedy moved people to insure no one tried to talk him out of it. He inherited a negatively inclined Lemnitzer as Chairman but replaced him with a recalled from retirement pro-intervention Maxwell Taylor to rid himself of a turbulent priest...

We also DID appreciate the fact that best COIN was done in advance of total deterioration but we deliberately and with full knowledge ignored it mostly for domestic political reasons ('national pride,' parts 2 and 3). That "fear of the expansion of communist ideology" was an excuse, not a reason. We do that kind of stuff a lot...

Our ethos is bi-polar. The ethos you espouse is in the books; the ethos we follow more often than not is keyed to cut throat domestic agendas and our international interests as perceived by the administration of the day. Lately, those all tend to be awfully mediocre...

All that is why for over two years I have continued to say the Jones version is great, ideally could be implemented -- but is not likely to be because it doesn't allow for such machinations which are critical to the survival of the US political class. Add our electoral process and the concomitant lack of continuity and your hopes are unlikely to be realized.

[Bob's World]

Ken,

No version of history is perfect, and I am sure I put my own twist on information that is already "well twisted" by others.

Key is that when we get into these messes that we do so knowingly. I am, based on my own personal experience with senior leadership, not so sure they appreciated the nature of the problem and how the actions they selected were likely to play out in the long run. We will still make political decisions for political reasons as you wisely point out, but armed with a more sophisticated understanding of these types of movements we can create into the original design aspects that can go a long way toward mitigating the downside of the likely consequences.